SURGEON’S SUPPORT

In his 2012 book “Concussions and Our Kids,” neurosurgeon Robert Cantu recommends no tackle football before age 14. At about that age, he says, players’ necks typically are stronger to help keep the head steadier, brains have matured and the kids can better make their own choices about risks and rewards.

But he also gives a thumbs up to Heads Up Football, the tackling style and concussion awareness program launched nationally by USA Football.

“I find Heads Up good. It’s all working toward the same thing, trying to make the sport safer,” says Cantu, chief of neurosurgery at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass., and clinical professor at Boston University School of Medicine.

In his book, Cantu noted that his pick of age 14 was not set in stone. He acknowledged that some 14- year- olds were skeletally immature and he wouldn’t suggest football for them, either.

“I was really trying to light a fire basically under the concept that no head trauma is good head trauma. The less you take, the better. And the later you start taking it, the better,” Cantu says. “But if you’re to take it at earlier ages, and if you’re going to take it any age for that matter, make it as minimal as possible.”

He does not expect children under 14 will stop playing football. “I’m not a person that has to have his whole pie,” Cantu says. “I put out that it’s all or none to try to get them toward the middle and make it safer.”